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Reigniting the Spark This Christmas
As a child I experienced the wonder of the holiday season with pure delight. I was a lucky child. I always seemed to open the one toy I really wanted.
My parents and my siblings lived in the same household. There were no divided Christmas celebrations, like some of my friends whose parents were divorced. But there was the annual trip across the state to celebrate the holidays with my grandparents, cousins and extended relatives.
Later in life, the joy of the season somehow lost it’s spark. I still enjoyed and looked forward to the holidays but the accumulation of stuff dimmed the light. I knew my kids would not play with all of the toys or wear all of the clothes they were given. I knew it was just too much.
All of the unnecessary packaging, wrapping, bows and ribbons overfilled large plastic bags. Those bags and boxes overfilled the garbage bin. Then the chore of finding a place for all of the new things began.
I tried to convince our families to scale back the gifts. Attempts were made to put spending caps on the kids gifts, we drew names for the adults and then eliminated gifts between adult siblings altogether.
Somehow it still resulted in too much stuff. All the gift giving also created stress on those in the family usually responsible for picking out the gifts, which in my…
